Daniel P. Driscoll

Like everyone realizes that.

And I think from the outside, before you take this job, you think, how is this possibly the case that so many smart people don't know this thing that I know?

As it turns out, you get in and they all know it too.

But it comes to be for a different reason, which is because they can't trust our demand signal, they basically have to say, all right, I'm going to work on this thing for you because you can't do it yourself, but you have to pay me along the way my costs.

Because if you change your mind along the way, then I have to be able to recoup my expenses plus some profit because I have shareholders.

And so as an example of the types of bad behavior that we incentivize,

We basically created many and most, I would say, of the bad outcomes and bad actions that our primes do.

And so that does not excuse them.

I still think it may be healthy for the system to put one of them out of business, but I'm much more— Why do you think that?

Do you think that sends a signal?

I think one of the amazing parts of capitalism is you see the story of Mark Zuckerberg making billions and billions of dollars and you want to go build that.

Another amazing part of capitalism is if you don't build and deliver something your customers want, you become a relic and you go out of business and the system resets and kind of the wave washes over the sand and starts again.

And the problem with our primes is they have integrated themselves so deeply and entrenched themselves.

in our Defense Department build cycles, that it would be really hard for us to operate without them.

And so I actually think it would be healthy for both us and them, for all of us to realize that this isn't intended to be a permanent relationship.

They have to earn their way back in each and every time they build something.

But in order to expect that out of them,

That means we, the Army, have to change our behavior too, which is a little bit harder and it's hard to say.

And so I guess back to the original prime question, I think in a perfect world, what they're going to do is, and AUSA is one of our annual meetings where, I hadn't been to it, but I've heard it was kind of,

Some believed it was average in the past.